“ENOUGH is as good as a feast,” is a favourite saying of my friend and JC old boy, Garth White, the original rebel from the intellectually combative times of the 1960s.

The troubling matter of ‘brand-name’ high schools, based mostly in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA), aggressively poaching student athletes from lesser-known schools for their track, and especially football programmes, is about to take a beating if Education Minister Ronald Thwaites (a St George’s old boy)follows through on his intention to issue a joint statement with ISSA, and bring legislation to stamp out this vulgar practice.

For about five, years Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham (a St George’s old boy), once the captain for a Jamaican national football side, has been writing letters and columns to the various newspapers pointing out the negatives of this practice. It has been one, he pointed out incessantly, that gave short- and long-term glory to the brand-name schools, robbed the lesser-known schools of potential sporting heroes and, in the end, ran the risk of giving up long-term development of the student athlete for the short burst of glory in his school days.

In plain language a ‘star baller’ is identified at Miss Matty High School in Forest Dump District, and his parent is approached. Maybe the father wants to do a little hustling, so the school gives him $300,000 to buy a third-hand taxicab and he hands over his son to the brand-name school. Maybe they will also throw in free lunches for as long as the boy maintains his football prominence.

The immediate objectives are plain. The prominent school in question makes the promise of a better sporting programme, the dubious one of exposure to a better shot at an academic base but in the short term, it is all for the benefit of placing the school at the top of the sporting calendars in football and track supremacy. Very few give two hoots about the boy after he leaves school and takes a job placing holes in pastry at a biscuit factory.

Dr Graham had the ear of Minister Thwaites, even as he earned the ire of old boys of the brand-name schools. “Leave well enough alone”, they shouted as they preferred to bask in the immediate glory of vicarious thrills, while conveniently forgetting that there was a young human’s life that needed a viable economic existence after his schooling days were over.

As background, most students who are placed in the brand-name institutions tend to rate highly in the GSAT scores, and those doing not so well end up at schools whose names are hardly ever mentioned among grown men at cocktail sessions in uptown settings. So a youngster who averaged 60 per cent ends up at Miss Matty, but he is a wizard with the football.

One of the JCs, KCs or George’s makes the approach and a trade is hurriedly arranged. The boy is promised many days of sunshine and glory, and maybe he, and of course the school, gets it for a few years. Miss Matty school, from whence he came, is never mentioned so its status remains low, and its ability to attract the best teachers falters. So, a vicious circle spins on and on.

The education minister said recently: “We met several times, and I would think conclusively with ISSA, and I am glad to say that the leadership of ISSA agrees with the position that the Ministry of Education would like to see. We have agreed that there will be a joint statement from the Ministry and ISSA at the end of this month.” Thwaites must have been having many meetings with sporting administrators which focused on the troubling aspects of the practice.

Policy formation is not something that happens overnight, which is why I am becoming a person who believes that one-term political administrations are meaningless.

A Friday article in the Jamaica Observer written by Howard Walker had the minister giving anecdotal evidence of the practice. “I will start with a report that just came from a school in western Jamaica. The old boys’ association had written to me telling me a story of a particular young person, talented sportsperson, who has been bought by another school,” said Thwaites.

“Some persons in that school had trumpeted what a wonderful thing it is to give students the opportunities.”

Then the article said: “The school Thwaites appeared to be referring to is Manning Cup champion Jamaica College, which came out defending their stance on transfers, citing that they are providing better opportunities for student athletes.”

Were I a sporting administrator at the offending school, and indeed even the headmaster, I would probably opt for the immediate glory, because I know the old boys association may well push me out of the school if I did not deliver those trophies once per year. Plus I would also want to satisfy a public gorged on sports fanaticism and forever demanding more glory.

Usain Bolt is probably not the best example to cite as he seems to have ‘super human’ qualities, but had his parents been approached when he was attending William Knibb, and he went to say, KC, his original high school would not have the glory.

As Dr Graham has consistently pointed out, the football programmes in many schools are excellent, as the country has many well-trained coaches at that level. Allowing the student athlete to meet his highest objectives, both sports-wise and academically, in his original school is a win-win at the national level.

I know that even with parliamentary legislation and adjustments to internal schools’ constitutions, there will always be methods devised to beat the system. That is expected. What will no longer be the norm is the barefaced poaching, where a school which celebrates a victory is really presenting a team which is a conglomerate of other schools.

Usually, the closest the athlete will get to being a true student of the school he attends is the moment he puts on the school colours. The fact is, hardly any effort is made to deal with the long-term development of the student athlete.

“Enough is indeed as good as a feast,” and we have gorged ourselves with the vulgar practice. Each school ought to have an equal chance at developing its sporting and academic programmes. When a mere handful of schools in the KMA, infernally pressured by the vicarious nature of their old boys’ associations, plot to steal the glory from many lesser-known schools, it keeps the spotlights of the handful and deny the overall development of many others.

It was always a numbers’ game in the past. It is time to end the illegal shuffling of the pack, where a few schools get all the aces and the many others end up with the ‘what lef’.

Congrats, Minister Thwaites and Dr Graham. Muggy, you are a champion in more ways than one –on and off the field.

Jamaican women also control Twitter and Facebook

Whenever I spend time on either Facebook or Twitter, I notice something which should come as no surprise. In the same manner that Jamaican women dominate our management class, on social media women dominate it by far.

I must confess that I am finding it most difficult to develop a cadre of men to converse with on the social networks. Women tend to outnumber men by about nine to one!

From my personal standpoint, I would love to see more men exchanging sensible views on both FB and Twitter. Of course, there is no shortage of that crowd in the political cussing gallery and the fanaticism which is the hallmark of the political diehard. Outside of that crowd, there are quite sensible women with powerful intellects whom I converse with a few times per week. But I must admit a bias. Too many women tend to draw the religious card, invoking inanities like a ‘prayer avalanche’, as if it does anything else other than satisfy an immediate high. I can understand someone announcing the death of a family member or personal illness and seeking prayers on Facebook. That I can understand. But when too many women tell me that ‘God’ has to step in before our crime situation and economy are fixed, I tend to want to converse with a man instead.

A reader, Richard G Williams, from the Department of Research and Evaluation, School District of Palm Beach, Florida, emailed me:

“Census and STATIN reports consistently show that there are more male youths in the population than females, but enrolment reports show more females in schools. Some of this imbalance is socio-culturally based as we start girls’ education earlier and view their education more important. We generally extend boys play age at the expense of their school age.

“This is also observed in high- poverty, majority-black communities in the US where academic and behavioral outcomes are poor. The argument for change in the US is based on having majority black prisons [and extrajudicial killings], despite being about 14 per cent of the population. At the school level, it is high-expulsions, high-suspensions, high-dropouts, and low-graduation rates.

“Changing this problem requires a long-term intervention to counter negative influences on youth’s behaviour promoted in media. For example, lyrics that say “I can make more money in a day than you make in a year” (with no value given to education, and hard work). Mandatory early school education may help, but data in the US and Jamaica show that black males are regressing.

“The key problem in Jamaica is places allocated for males. In 1986 I proposed getting rid of our multi-tiered education system (that is high, technical high, comprehensive high, secondary, technical secondary, junior secondary, all-age) such that all students should get a modern high school education and not be rejected due to not having enough places (males most affected).

“Successive governments moved on this by converting secondary schools to high school, but did not address the proportion of males to females enrolled based on the youth population, much less the historic imbalance that leads to the shocking imbalance at the tertiary education level and management hiring, due to continuation of the 60:40 hiring policy of the 1970s.

“I am proud of my sisters’ achievements, but upset that it was at the expense of my brothers’ growth. In comparing the patterns in Jamaica with the US and South Africa, the long-term impact of racist, colonial policies and practices to marginalise blacks, black males in particular, have been institutionalised and internalised to the extent that we continue them at our own detriment.”

So we are seemingly on a path that is unstoppable. What happens when 90 per cent of our top managers are women? Are we likely to see a reverse of sexism at the workplace? Most importantly, will that cause our men to totally give up and immerse themselves deeper in the underground economy and organised criminality?

Too many of our men folk are on Facebook cussing like two wasters at a market stall. Of course, there are no shortage of women doing the same. The diehard JLP men refer to the PNP as ‘scumreds’, which the diehard JLP women call the PNP ‘Nazis’. And, for the diehard PNP men and women on Facebook the trending term for JLP supporters are ‘Laba’ and ‘losers’. But nine out of 10 times social media are totally dominated by women — Bible thumpers, prayer warriors, those cussing out their men, girlfriends, and politicians and high-grade intellectuals. Where are the men?

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